“Class relations” will be taken to refer to inequalities in the distribution of power and in principles of control between social groups, which are realized in the creation, distribution, reproduction, and legitimation of physical and symbolic values that have their source in the social division of labor. In terms of the particular problems of the relationships between class and the process of its cultural reproduction, as developed in this thesis, what has to be shown is how class regulation of the distribution of power and of principles of control generates, distributes, reproduces, and legitimates dominating and dominated principles regulating the relationships within and between social groups and so forms of consciousness. What we are asking here is how the distribution of power and principles of control are transformed, at the level of the subject, into different, invidiously related, organizing principles, in such a way as both to position subjects and to create the possibility of change in such positioning. The broad answer given by this thesis is that class relations generate, distribute, reproduce, and legitimate distinctive forms of communication, which transmit dominating and dominated codes, and that subjects are differentially positioned by these codes in the process of their acquisition. “Positioning” is used here to refer to the establishing of a specific relation to other subjects and to the creating of specific relationships within subjects. In general, from this point of view, codes are culturally determined positioning devices. More specifically, class regulated codes position subjects with respect to dominating and dominated form of communication and to the relationships between them. Ideology is constituted through and in such positioning. From this perspective, ideology inheres in and regulates modes of relation. Ideology is not so much a content as a mode of relation for the realizing of contents.

Ain't occurs as a sociolinguistic variable in working class speech in the town of Reading, England. The phonetic realizations of ain't in Reading English do not accord with traditional etymologies, depending more on the syntactic environment in which ain't occurs than on the standard English forms from which they are usually assumed to derive. The phonetic variants are also marked for semantic function in tag questions. Variation in the use of ain't can be explained as reflecting an ongoing linguistic change (sociolinguistics, dialectology, language change, theoretical linguistics).

This study into the nature of “the floor” actually began as an open-ended inquiry into sex differences that might occur beyond the sentence level in the multi-party interaction of five informal committee meetings. Technical difficulties prompted the trying out of several different transcription displays, most of which failed to capture the “feel” of the interaction and each of which biased (in its own way) the perception of what had actually gone on. The type of unconventional display eventually used was intended to show the floor holder in the center of the page, flanked by co-occurring talk. Because there were many episodes for which a single floor holder could not be identified, the primary focus of the study shifted to the nature of the floor itself. Questions about sex differences became a secondary and succeeding focus.

In the analysis, “floor” and “turn” were distinguished on the basis of “participant-sense” rather than technical criteria. Two kinds of floors were subjectively identified: F1, a singly developed floor; and F2, a collaborative venture where several people seemed to be either operating on the same wavelength or engaging in a free-for-all. The two kinds of floors were differentiated objectively by such features as quantity and frequency participation, language functions, number of nonturn utterances, overlaps, and pauses. There were indeed sex/language differences, but these were related to the type of floor being developed. Men took more and longer turns and did more of the joking, arguing, directing, and soliciting of responses F1 's. Turn length and frequency differences were neutralized in F2's, and certain language functions were used by women to a greater extent in F2's than in F1 's. (Conversational analysis, gender and language, qualitative research methodology.)

A discourse-oriented classroom activity in an ethnically mixed, first grade classroom is studied from an interpretive perspective, integrating ethnographic observation and fine-grained conversational analysis. “Sharing time” is a recurring activity where children are called upon to describe an object or give a narrative account about some past event to the entire class. The teacher, through her questions and comments, tries to help the children structure and focus their discourse. This kind of activity serves to bridge the gap between the child's home-based oral discourse competence and the acquisition of literate discourse features required in written communication.

Through a detailed characterization of the children's sharing styles, evidence is provided suggesting that children from different backgrounds come to school with different narrative strategies and prosodic conventions for giving narrative accounts. When the child's discourse style matches the teacher's own literate style and expectations, collaboration is rhythmically synchronized and allows for informal practice and instruction in the development of a literate discourse style. For these children, sharing time can be seen as a kind of oral preparation for literacy. In contrast, when the child's narrative style is at variance with the teacher's expectations, collaboration is often unsuccessful and, over time, may adversely affect school performance and evaluation. Sharing time, then, can either provide or deny access to key literacy-related experiences, depending, ironically, on the degree to which teacher and child start out “sharing” a set of discourse conventions and interpretive strategies. (Urban communication, ethnic/subcultural differences in discourse style, the transition to literacy, American English.)